Intergalactic Super Highway
by Grac3
Summary: The Doctor reads fanfiction now; fanfiction is cool. Yet he soon finds a series of stories that appear to have been written about his two companions - and they are all by the same person.


**Warning:** Spoilers for anything post The Impossible Astronaut

**Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who**

* * *

It was a slippery slope when the Doctor first discovered fanfiction. It had all started when Amy and Rory had got him a tablet: a piece of 21st Century Earth technology that he had known about for years, but that he hadn't ever seen any point in possessing for himself. Besides, his time was far too valuable for him to get addicted to Candy Crush Saga. Not to mention the paradoxes that could be created if he joined Facebook in the first place.

Yet, in all his time wandering around the universe, he realised – as he held this wondrous piece of human technology in his hand – he had never actually spent that much time on the Internet. Even the Daleks knew more about the information super highway than he did, and it would never do for the Daleks to know more about something than he did (especially seeing as the reason that they knew so much about the Internet was, technically, his fault).

So he began to waste his precious time on the things that humans did: looking at moving pictures of cats falling off of things and learning more acronyms and jargon than appeared on any document ever created by the Shadow Proclamation.

It was a few weeks before he discovered that the information super highway was, in fact, the intergalactic super highway; not only did people from all over the universe post moving pictures of whatever counted as a pet on their planet falling off of things, but they also wrote stories based on their favourite characters from everything from memos that were passed between officer workers, to the biggest blockbusters shown on the biggest screens on the biggest cinema planets in the galaxy.

He started off simple, with Harry Potter stuff; they had been his favourite books as a child (even though he had been born long before they had actually been written). From there, it was only a matter of time before he began to delve deeper and deeper into the brand new world that he had discovered, including stumbling across a rather disturbing Carrionite story which appeared to prove the existence of white holes in an incredibly detailed description of the conception of Teddy Lupin. After a few months, however, he began to find stories that had rather familiar characters.

He had initially thought that it was merely a coincidence that the main character in a single story was called Amy. There were lots of characters called Amy; there were lots of people called Amy. It was a nice name – not as fairy tale as Amelia, but nothing was perfect. Yet as he continued to read the stories about this Amy, he soon discovered that she was affiliated with another character called Rory; it was at this point that the Doctor began to become suspicious.

At first, he had considered that it was entirely possible that someone had plucked two names out of their head to write about that just happened to be the same names of his two companions; but there were certain characteristics about these literary versions of the Ponds which seemed uncannily familiar.

The Doctor grabbed his sonic screwdriver, holding it up to the screen of his tablet and trying to locate the author of these stories, determined to find out exactly how they knew so much about his companions – especially considering that he himself never appeared in any of them, and how could whoever this was know all about the Ponds and nothing about him?

When the buzzing of the screwdriver changed in pitch to indicate that its scan was complete, he shook it once to open the top and read off the results from the screen; his jaw dropped in shock as he read off the oh, so familiar coordinates.

"No..."

~{G}~

"_Are you sure it's alright?" Rory asked, scratching the back of his head awkwardly._

_Amy ran the rose over in her hand, taking care not to prick herself-_

The insistent tapping of fingers on the keyboard stopped abruptly, as a strange noise began to fill the corridor outside the door: a wheezing sound, loud and shrill, like metal grating against itself. She grinned at the sound, shutting her laptop quickly and throwing it under her pillow.

Getting up from her bed, she looked out into the corridor beyond, to see a blue box – a police telephone box – materialising before her eyes. A few seconds after the box had stabilised, a man in a tweed jacket and a bow tie stepped out, a look of thunder on his face and a tablet in his hand.

Nevertheless, she grinned at him. "Hello, sweetie."

The Doctor did not look amused. He didn't acknowledge his wife's greeting, marching up to her angrily as he opened the door to her cell with the sonic screwdriver and thrusting the tablet out under her nose.

River sighed, taking the tablet out of his hand and looking at what was loaded on the screen. She had told her parents that it had been a bad idea to get the Doctor a way of accessing the intergalactic super highway, and she was now being presented with the evidence to prove that she had been right.

On the screen before her was one of her stories, one that she had written about her parents.

"What is this?" the Doctor spat, putting his hands on his hips in that adorable way that he did that made him look like an old housewife.

"It's fanfiction," she said smoothly, handing the tablet back to him. He took it angrily, tucking it under his arm and pinching the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and his thumb.

"Please tell me I did not just read any spoilers," he begged, sounding exhausted. The two of them desperately tried to prevent them finding out about each other's futures, assuming each time they saw each other that they were essentially meeting for the first time. She could understand his concern, but she was mostly angry that he thought that she would be as stupid as to put up sections from her diary on the Internet.

"No," she told him, turning her back on him and going back over to her bed.

"Then..." the Doctor spluttered, following her into the cell, "_why_?"

River shrugged. "I ship them, and I have nothing else to do in here, since you got me locked up in this cell."

The Doctor sighed, as he usually did when she complained about her multiple life sentence, but he still visibly relaxed at the reassurance that he had not read anything that would happen in his personal future, his previously incredulous expression being replaced with one that held the signature sadness that always seemed to be present in his eyes.

"Do you..." he began, shifting uncomfortably, "do you... ship us?"

He looked up at her from his feet, a sheepish expression on his face.

She smiled at him, reaching for her laptop stashed away under her pillow. Pressing a few buttons – and being well aware of his eyes watching her as she did so – she called up one of her more recent stories.

"Of course," she told him, handing him the laptop. He grabbed it off of her, settling down in the chair opposite her bed to read, his goofy smile plastered across his face.


End file.
